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Mycobacteria Make Spores?

Guest blogger for Small Things Considered Peter Setlow, Professor of Molecular, Microbial and Structural Biology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT, has an eye-opening post about a recent paper, Sporulation in Mycobacteria, published in PNAS this April.

"Rarely does news come along that threatens to overturn our cherished beliefs. Since early after the discovery of tubercle bacilli by Robert Koch in 1882, the mycobacteria have been considered not to be spore formers. Now this is being challenged by a new report."

"These observations would certainly be a paradigm shift in Mycobacterium biology, particularly regarding our thoughts about the reasons for the latency of mycobacterial infections. Given the revolutionary implications of these conclusions, it is obviously imperative that a high standard of proof be applied to such work."